Wireless communications has grown nearly exponentially in recent years. The growth is fueled by larger networks with more reliable protocols and better communications hardware available to service providers and consumers. The increasing demand for wireless communications requires enhanced operability between wireless and wired networks. In many cases, telephony switches are limited by standards, such as Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2). The 3GPP2 provides a third generation mobile system that allows, for example, a single switch to implement information management system behavior over both wireless and wired packet environments. The limitations of the standards prevent all features of both wired and wireless networks from being fully integrated and accessible through legacy wired telephone switches.
Despite improving wireless technology, wireless-to-wireless calls are still plagued by poor quality of service (QoS). Additionally, many wireless service providers lack coverage in rural communities because of the expansive geographic areas that must be covered and the expense of making coverage to a limited population. Quality of service is a generic term for measuring and maintaining the quality of a network including particularly latency and voice quality for wireless communications. Many users notice quality of service problems when phone calls are dropped, delayed, or otherwise scrambled or made unrecognizable. Quality of service is not a significant problem for traditional wired phone service providers. Unfortunately, the switches and devices used by wired and wireless networks are not well integrated for providing both quality of service and wireless accessibility.
In many cases, a wireless user may prefer to use a wired telephone because of the better quality of service despite having service features, such as free nights and weekends and wireless-to-wireless minutes. In other situations, the user may not have wireless coverage at home and is therefore required to use the wired telephone to make outgoing phone calls. As a result, the wireless service plan is not fully utilized costing the user money and available resources.